Sen. Ted Cruz – FCC Chairman’s Remarks “Dangerous As Hell”  We recently praised Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr for a spirited defense of free speech. Regarding so-called “hate speech,” Carr made it clear that there is no such category of speech that can be censored under American law. What a difference a few days make. Chairman Carr this week threatened to effectuate the removal of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel from the air. Carr told a podcaster, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
We do not find Kimmel particularly amusing, and certainly not someone we would stay up late to watch. Sen. Cruz also made it clear he didn’t appreciate Kimmel and hated many things he said. Sen. Cruz understands that Kimmel’s First Amendment rights are our rights. The Shoe Is Now on the Other Ideological Foot For years, Protect The 1st has complained about the left’s cancel culture. The FBI detailed 80 agents to privately order social media companies to remove content, almost all of it conservative content. We wrote about the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which funded a London-based NGO that privately advised corporate advertisers to avoid such dangerous publications as Reason magazine. We denounced left-wing mobs on campus that exercised the heckler’s veto and threatened speakers with violence. We called out this heavy-handed “jawboning” as nothing but coercion from a government with immense regulatory authority. Conservatives Standing Up for the First Amendment Do conservatives now really want to institutionalize these practices by using the power of the Federal Communications Commission to approve media mergers as a way to regulate speech? Many Republicans and conservatives are demonstrating that the better angels of our nature are still perched on many shoulders.
Many more Republicans we speak to on Capitol Hill are also disturbed by this trend at the FCC, both for what it does to our constitutional liberties, and how it may be used against them by a future administration. A High-Profile Liberal Speaks Out for “American Moxie” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), a liberal’s liberal from a blue state, showed similar courage when he spoke out against social media’s blocking of The New York Post’s coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story. He writes in The Wall Street Journal that President Trump and Vice President Vance should “change direction.” In particular, he called on the latter to live up to the promise of his speech before the Munich Security Conference, in which he accurately criticized Germany, the UK, and other countries in the EU for using heavy-handed tactics to silence speakers. Rep. Khanna writes: “A government that feels comfortable bullying the private sphere – whether businesses, hospitals, universities, employers or individuals – strips away our audacity as Americans to speak our minds and call out those in power. If we lose that we lose our American moxie.” Here’s to hoping that Chairman Carr returns to the free speech convictions that were such a hallmark of his prior work. Comments are closed.
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